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Thank to everyone who took part in this month’s session. We had a lot of great response. It was great to see such a breadth of posts, and I was happy to see some people contribute who haven’t in a while. Here for your reading pleasure:

Mario at Brewed For Thought defines the “California Session Beer”, made with umph, but not too much.

The Beer Nut takes us on a small tour of two session beers: Hopback Entire Stout and Breconshire Night Beacon.

John/Devoid of Beertaster.ca talks about his favorite lawnmower beers.

Steph Weber, one of the many talented bloggers of the Hop Press posits that session beer is a personal definition, and tells us hers: easy to enjoy while chatting with friends.

Chris at Notch Session Ales gives us a look at his recent article for Beer Advocate magazine in which he says he wants to take the definition for session beer back from the 6% crowd.

Derrick at Bay Area Beer Runner likens session beer “great background music during an evening out with friends.”

Jay at A Beer in Hand (is worth two in the fridge) tells us about returning to his session stout after an affair with IPAs.

Lew Bryson goes to town at The Session Beer Project, puts some old demons to bed, and reiterates his definition a session beer in the face of the bigger burrito. You’ll never think of a ball-washer at the golf course the same way again.

Steve at All Good Beer hopes that craft breweries will continue to expand the session beer market, even though they’re not necessarily headline-grabbing beers.

Brian Yaeger, author of Red, White, and Brew says that if he had a lawn, he’d mow it with Anchor Steam. Well, no. He’d mow it with a riding lawnmower, but he’d drink Anchor Steam. He also waxes eloquent about the low ABV brews at this local hangouts.

Sean at Beer Search Party suggests that the reason that the Session Beer Train has not yet pulled into the station is because of America’s hypocritical self-view of over-consumption, or perhaps that many craft beer drinkers see session beers as “too macro.”

Someone at Beer Made Clear (there so many of you guys), who apparently has family neighboring mine in Northern Maine (yeah Fort Kent!) and tells a story of discovering Shipyard Fuggles IPA in during a session which he describes as “all-encompassing conversations which start with beers but end with opinions; on politics, culture or the nature of good and evil.”

Jon at The Brew Site gets back to the review and gives us a one of Gone Fishin Mild Ale, from Beer Valley Brewing.

Peter at A Better Beer Blog notes that session drinking is “essentially the guts of the craft beer movement” and hopes that craft brewers will start to “sessionize” everything instead of “imperialize” everything in the future.

Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer tells that old joke about the Englishman, the Belgian, and the Czech, notes that session beers are different for everyone and wonders whether the appellation “session” needs definition at all.

Seabass, from Natty Greene’s, posts from inside aussenhaus where he compares craft beer to coffee and wine, and notes that session beers are the greatest delight and the hardest to make, and defines session beer as “deliciously non-intrusive, self-explanatory, [and] a good companion in life.”

Alan at A Good Beer Blog notes that what is probably stopping craft beer from growing is the industry’s inability to take advantage of the session market.

This post is a contribution to The Session, aka Beer Blogging Friday. This month’s topic is session beers hosted – hooray – here, by me.
Ever since I suggested the topic, I’ve been struggling with what I was going to write about it. I’ve noticed, with interest, bloggers from other countries noting that Americans are particularly worked up about the concept of session beers, which is interesting. To many other beer cultures, it’s probably a ridiculous concept that MOST of the beer available isn’t a session beer. Even in America that isn’t the case, though we do have a particularly large market for high-gravity and low attenuation.

So, I’ve been thinking about it. What is a session beer?

It’s not about low alcohol. After all, if that were the only criteria, BMC has session beer in spades and, sorry to say (or maybe happy to say), Bud Light is not a session beer for me.

It’s not the “more” factor that I’ve heard bandied about. Session beer, to me, is not about binge drinking. It’s not about the ability to over-consume.

No, to me I think what defines a session beer is a beer that I can enjoy without effort. It’s not a particular style of beer, or even a particular alcohol content, so much as it is accessibility. It is a beer that I can drink without having to think about – “What is that flavor?” “How is this made?” “What’s going on in this beer?”

My best example of this might be gueuze. It’s a low alcohol beer, it’s light, and it’s easy drinking, but it is not a session beer. It’s challenging and complex, and when I drink one I want to linger over it and examine it. I want to roll it around my mouth and look for more flavor. I want to savor it and drink it with food. I want to keep discovering more things about it, and while I think it’s delicious, that challenging complexity is what stops it from being a session beer to me.

It’s the same experience I have with most high-gravity selections. There’s a lot going on in each sip, and I want to enjoy it. Even when they’re deceptively easy drinking, they’re still a challenge. They still require thought and time to enjoy and savor.

And so I submit my definition for a session beer: it’s not about the strength, or the ability to drink a lot of it. It’s not bland beer or boring beer. It’s beer that can be enjoyed without effort, one that I can keep by my side during an evening with friends and still thoroughly enjoy every sip, even if I’m not paying attention to it.

And, in my opinion, that is what our current craft beer market could use more of.

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Just a quick reminder that this week is the week for Beer Blogging Friday or, The Session.

This month’s topic is session beers. I’ll be posting my contribution to the Session on Friday, as well. Feel free to submit a link to your contribution in the comments here, on the announcement, or on my column on Friday or over the weekend. I’ll collect them all and post the round up Monday morning.

I’m looking forward to reading what you have to say!

Cheers,
Erik

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The Session, a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday, is an opportunity once a month for beer bloggers from around the world to get together and write from their own unique perspective on a single topic. Each month, a different beer blogger hosts the Session, chooses a topic and creates a round-up listing all of the participants, along with a short pithy critique of each entry.
I am the host of June’s Session, Session #40. Because it is one of my absolute favorite topics, and because it seems appropriate for both the forum and the time of year, I give you this topic:

Session Beer

There are a thousand ways to approach this.

What is your definition of a session beer? Is it, as Dr. Lewis suggested at the Craft Brewers Conference this year, “a pint of British wallop” or is your idea of a session beer a crisp Eastern European lager, a light smoky porter, a dry witbier, or even a dry Flemish sour?

Is it merely enough for a beer to be low alcohol to be considered a session beer, or is there some other ineffable quality that a beer must hold in order to merit the term? And if so, what is that quality? Is it “drinkability”? Or something else?

What about the place of session beer in the craft beer industry? Does session beer risk being washed away in the deluge of extreme beers, special releases, and country-wide collaborations? Or is it the future of the industry, the inevitable palate-saving backlash against a shelf full of Imperial Imperials?

What are some of your favorite session beers? When and where do you drink them? If you’d like, drink one and review it.

The topic of this month’s Session is “Collaborations”, the hot, new gimmick in the craft beer industry. The announcements of this month’s session asked:Whoâ€™s brewed some of your favorite collaborations? Who have been some of your favorite collaborators? Who would you like to see in a future collaboration?

If I had to pick one, I’d say that the Hopfen-Weisse was probably my favorite out of them, but mainly because it was the most delicate of them, which showed off how well crafted it was. A close second is Limb & Life – second runnings are difficult to predict. That Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada were able to create such a compelling beer from second runnings speaks volumes.

Here’s the thing: I have a hard time believing that collaboration makes a huge difference in what I’m tasting in the beer. If we’re talking about two breweries who make exceptional beer, chances are the beer is going to be exceptional, whether it’s a blend of beers from different breweries or a collaborative recipe a la Hopfen-Weisse. Let’s face it, we can’t taste the individual components that have been blended together. All we can taste is a great beer. That’s a wonderful thing, but the only thing that sets a collaborative beer apart from any other great beer is the intent and concept behind its creation – that is where I take my largest share of enjoyment.

In collaborations I see the future of the craft beer industry. By that I don’t mean that years from now all breweries will collaborate with each other constantly, though that may well be the case. No, what I see from collaborations is a reflection of the camaraderie present in the craft beer industry that is one of the best public definitions of what makes craft beer stand apart. In collaborations, we see that rather than attempting to force your competitors off the shelves, it is possible to embrace them and work together for the common good of both of your companies. We see the antithesis of corporate monopoly and dog-eat-dog capitalism. We see the tightening of a figurative band of brothers, where love of craft perseveres over mere petty competitiveness.

You hear the phrase all around the craft industry: “A rising tide lifts all boats.” It’s the mantra that everybody repeats, signifying that what helps one craft brewery helps all of them, and it’s true. Collaborations are the natural extension of this attitude and they exemplify the philosophy that will spell out the success of the industry in the future: camaraderie, not competition; collaboration, not litigation.